A lot of times people think about injuries, they think about doing too much volume, workouts, too much activity and maybe they progress too quickly. When you think about injuries, a lot of times, it’s pretty easy to think about balance? We got this little scale here. There’s an activity you’re doing, how much you can tolerate and your tolerance.
Basically, the question we’re asking is, can you recover? How much are you doing? Can you recover from it? That’s the stress plus rest leads to growth. How we improve is by continually stressing the system, recovering, and repeating. So, the questions is does increased activity are cause injuries? Is it your miles per week? Is it your workouts? Maybe it’s too much frequency activity? That’s what a lot of people think is causing increased activity/injury risk.
What about your tolerance? What sort of things could cause your tolerance to change? Perhaps, this is what people need to focus on. We have a stress, we have a lack of nutrition, food, we have a big lack of sleep. Things that we can focus on, that are going to actually just decrease our tolerance. So without modifying this at all, we can put ourselves in a state that we have an increased risk for injury, purely because we’re neglecting these things (increased stress, lack of nutrition, decreased sleep) which are causing us not to recover. If you’re having an injury right now and you’re struggling, give it some thought. Is the activity causing your injury? Are you having too much activity? Most likely, you’re not allowing yourself to recover. And this tolerance is going down. Your activity needs to modify because of that and you need to work on your recovery (sleep, nutrition, hydration, stress management) to allow yourself to tolerate the activity levels that you’re striving to reach.
Here at Peak Endurance Performance & Physical Therapy we help active adults in the Madison Area get back to the activities they love without pain or limitations. We see people of all ages, ability levels, and individuals trying to get back to a multitude of movements including: getting back into running, women postpartum, CrossFit athletes, climbers, gymnasts, wrestlers, overhead athletes, and your recreational weekend warrior. If you’re looking to get back to the activities that give you meaning, relieve stress, and make you feel like you again, feel free to reach out below and we’ll see if we’re the right fit for you.
